


Not Exactly Waiting

by yuletide_archivist



Category: Everwood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-12-22
Updated: 2003-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-25 07:57:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1640135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yuletide_archivist/pseuds/yuletide_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Madison may not be the one, and this may not last forever. He tends to convince himself that it just doesn't matter."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Exactly Waiting

**Author's Note:**

> Written for alejandra

 

 

He remembers being twelve, maybe thirteen, tapping out fast songs in the living room while dinner stayed warm in the oven. At nine his mother finally came in and gave him a soft smile, said it was time to eat. "What, he's not gonna show?" he asked. The edge in his voice was getting to be automatic in those days 

"I'll wait up for him," she said. A time comes when you have to stop waiting, her smile said. They ate quietly, and he still hadn't heard his father come home by the time he fell asleep. 

The thing was, his mother had been beautiful and smart and strong, but she'd had her needs. Sometimes he'd wished it were different, that she could break free and leave his father and just be. Sometimes he'd wished she would give up on a lost cause. 

But most times, really, she was just his mother. She would look quiet and sad, and she would still tell him to respect his father. She would sigh at over-cooked meals, and she would light up when he came through the door three hours late or more. She would forgive him so many things. 

By the time she was gone, Ephram still hadn't quite figured out why. 

And as far as he knew, she died still waiting for the person she needed his father to be. And then there was a funeral, and the severing of ties and the long move west, and Amy. He thought he was starting to understand what his mother had been waiting for all along. 

And why she'd bothered at all. And, eventually, finally, at last, what it felt like to be waiting for the wrong thing. Because Amy started with a funeral, and she ended with a funeral, and somewhere in between was a glimmer of hope that lately he thinks he might have imagined, but the possibility doesn't bother him nearly as much as it probably should. 

When he sees her at school these days, she's pale shades of what she used to be, thin and faded. She reminds him of how he's been since his mother died; he hasn't liked himself a lot since then.   
 

* * *

  


If he ever reached the level of conscious thought about it, it would probably bother him to realize that Madison is a lot like his mother. 

That he likes her - loves her? - needs her _because_ of some of the similarities. She bends the rules sometimes, sets Delia to work at some art project and comes to sit with him on the bench as he plays. She listens silently, and touches his knee, and then gets up to go make dinner. 

She listens when he vents his frustrations about his father, and she tells him with just a look that he should either let it go, or talk to his father like an adult. Tells him he can be a better person, that he should be. 

She makes him try. He likes himself more, with Madison. He likes that she's willing to wait for the person she seems to think he can become.   
 

* * *

  


Summer means Madison in babysitter mode full-time, and his father offering overtime hours that no sane person would turn down. "Delia's not work," she says when Ephram asks if she gets tired. "Delia's getting paid to have fun." 

"Delia" is a set of strict rules; Madison and his father reached an uneasy peace and she's settled more and more into a firm insistence that there have to be boundaries, and they have to be observed. The first week after school lets out, she takes Delia to Denver for a day, for what she calls the "PG version of a girl's night out, Ephram. You're not invited." But she smiles as she says it, and kissing her good night is longer and softer than usual, like an apology for her new summer strictness. "Delia comes first," she tells him yet again. "We'll figure it out. We'll adjust." 

So Delia comes first, but when Delia comes bursting into the house with a Denver Zoo hat on her head and several bags full of new summer clothes (the real purpose of the trip, the solution to his father's cluelessness over what to do with a daughter's changing needs and wants), he slips out and finds her leaning against her car, waiting. "Have fun?" he asks, hands in his pockets and shoulders hunched against the cool evening breeze. 

"Quite a lot." She smiles, big and brilliant, and even in the dark of the night she looks flushed from a day in the sun, glowing brighter than usual. "I brought you something." 

And he slips his arms around her waist and kisses her, likes the way she bites his lip softly and seems reluctant to let it go. "Just what I wanted," he says against her cheek, and she laughs, pulling out of his grasp to lean into the open driver's seat window. 

She emerges with a bag and an even bigger smile. "You're quite the charmer, Ephram Brown. But here. I brought you something _else_." 

He looks in the bag, and he falls a little deeper in love in that second. Weeks ago she sat on the floor of his room and told him to tell her about manga, and he sat next to her and talked until the sun went down and his room was gray with shadows, and he remembers mentioning, a passing thought, a collection he'd love to have if he could find it. Now here it is, in his hands, and she's not smiling anymore. She's looking at him and she's waiting, chewing her lip. "I didn't get the wrong thing, did I? I called this friend in Denver, that day you were telling me - I asked him to look around, see what he could come up with. But I can take it back if I mixed up the name -" 

He kisses her, and kisses her again, and then again, and smiling against each other's mouths is awkward, full of clicking teeth. They wind up laughing; he winds up with his head on her shoulder and his breath against her neck, and the street lamp comes on then and spills light over their tangled form. "I thought today was only about girls," he says quietly. "Delia hates this stuff." 

She slides her fingers through his hair, rubs his scalp lazily. "But you don't," she tells him, just as quietly. "So this girl had an errand to do."   
 

* * *

  


His father might be right. Madison may not be the one, and this may not last forever. If it ended tomorrow, it would hurt like hell. But when he lets himself admit all of that, usually late at night and in his drearier moods, he tends to convince himself that it just doesn't matter. 

He finally gets that his mother was never waiting for anything at all. She was taking it as it came, as best she could, because she needed something that was worth the pain and the risk. 

Madison is lasting for now. She's worth the risk. 

 


End file.
